Friday August 29, 2014

An early start today, we were on the road by 8:45 am.  It had rained in the night, but was clear when we first got up.  However, it started to drizzle as we were loading the bikes.  Drizzle isn’t so bad, it was warm, so we left the YHA in the drizzle.

Last night I had asked the guy at the youth hostel, which was the better route to take – up and over the hill or along a busier road?  His response was “You go left out of here and up two small montains for 8kms then it is flat for 4 kms, then you go down hill.  I did it with my brother a few years ago it is a nice road, we have not done it again.”

Two small mountains or busy road? – two small mountains it was!  Because the hill kicked up as soon as we left the hostel, we decided to walk the bikes until it flattened out a bit.  Two kilometres later and it eventually flattened out a little bit and we got on the bikes, it was still going uphill.

This road was the road we would have taken two days ago to get to the camp site.  I would have died and possibly killed Ralf if I hadn’t spotted the YHA.  The campsite was 4.5 kms out of town and at an elevation of 375 metres!  It looked like a lovely location.

The drizzle continued for most of our two mountain ride, we could see about 100 metres in front of us.

We could not see the hills coming up, which was probably a good thing, and we could not see the hills going down.

We stopped for lunch in a small port town.  There do not appear to be any sandwich shops in Spain.  Lots of cafeterias that sell good coffee and pastries and ice-cream.  I popped into a small grocery store, they had full-grain baguettes, meats and cheeses – I bought the fixings for our lunch and the lady sliced our baguettes for us and we made our sandwiches on a park bench.  We got a lot of strange looks at us eating our lunch and the loaded touring bikes, but no one stopped for a conversation.

Spotted these donkeys on the way down a hill, Ralf stopped to take the photo for me.

We arrived in Deba at about 2:00 pm and discovered the campsite we were going to stay at was actually 2 kilometres back up the road we had just come screaming down.  I checked the campsite book I had got in the Tourismo Office in San Sebastien and there was another campsite 2 kilometres out of Deba, not quite on the road we were going to take to Bilboa tomorrow, but it was in the general direction.

We arrived in Mutriku and followed the directions up a 12% grade hill to the campsite.  I pushed the bike up the 200 metres to the reception area.  I was convinced there would not be a flat piece of ground for our tent, but there was and it was a lovely campsite with a great view over the ocean and town.

The price was only E15, it had a little grocery store on site and the prices aren’t too bad, so we bought the fixings for dinner at the store.

We talked to a nice family from England about our trip and their vacation.  The daughter planted the seed into her parents head about a trip to Spain.  They drove out in their camper van and she flew out to join them for 2 weeks vacation and they then take a sedate drive back to England.

We have a warmshowers in Bilbao tomorrow night we are meeting him at the Guggenheim museum at the flower dog.

It will be a long hilly ride (64 kms), but at least we will have a bed to sleep in and a good shower tomorrow night.  I think I have become a little fixated with my showers of late.